 All right, let's get going everybody. Welcome to logic live. My name is Andy. I'll be your host today We have a wonderful Episode lined up for you today. We're gonna have a conversation with will Harris and yon la for a of Autodesk you know them you love them and Before we before we begin Let's just give a shout out to our friends at cynicism shiana who are sponsoring logic live. These guys are my own personal Reseller, I've been working with them for 15 years. We could not do what we do without them and they're a huge supporter of Logic and the flame community they host our our user groups in New York But also user groups in Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, Toronto, Detroit and probably more If and they've also been huge supporters of Like one frame of white. They're always volunteering prizes and just a great bunch of guys If you have any needs or questions Definitely reach out to to the folks at cynicism cynicism shiana provides solutions to keep teams connected and working Find out more about their remote workflow solutions at cynicism.io cynicism shiana supporting flame artists since 1997. Oh Right There's everybody So I just want to welcome first welcome will and yon to logic live. Hello guys. How you doing? Hi, Andy doing great. Thanks for having us of course Hi, Andy Nice to virtually see you again You know, I thought it would be great to to have you guys on and talk about Flame and flame development, but you know really take advantage of the time that we have To kind of dive deep and and maybe just get a little bit more detail or go into a little bit more detail About some of the the things that come up either online or in the forums or at the user groups But before we get too deep into Into the nitty-gritty, I figured let's let's introduce the two of you to the you know to the rest of the crowd here So starting with will will I mean I remember Meeting you at various, you know of flame events Before you became the product manager, but tell us a little bit about yourself and and your journey Sure. Yeah, Andy So I'm a I'm British originally, but you in the been in the States for almost 20 years Went went to university in Canterbury, England did a film TV program finished in 98 and Then and then ended to start started in the like the like a lot of people Maybe is like a runner in the post business in London and work my way through to to come into the States for a Edit company called media 100 if you remember those guys. Oh, I remember media 100. Sure. I didn't know that Yeah, and so I was like a tech support guy in the early 2000s there became a demo guy and I remember one of the sales reps there in Massachusetts said to me Do you what do you want to have on your resume? Do you want to have Worcester, Massachusetts? Or do you want to have Los Angeles and I was and I was dreamy eye at that point and and went out to LA and started showing off stuff and Got to work for key code media the average reseller in in LA and then and then I'd heard of this thing Like what's better than avid was kind of I was working my way up the ranks and and then I that was about the time Do I first heard of flint and flame and fire and then I remember once going to riot Santa Monica? And they had seven onyxes, which is now like method in like like staring at each other like iron man and Hulkbuster I Crossed the machine room and I was like oh wow This is a whole another level and it took me a few more years to finally get to work on that kind of gear at company 3 I worked on on the smokes on the Tez Rose Back to London to frame store to work in the DI department and worked on smoke advanced again and then Back to LA and laser Pacific and luster for a little bit And then finally I got the call from Dave Sampson at Autodesk who was very much an old discreet guy Hey, well, you know come come and come and join us and And the first assignment was just learn that thing for six months Because I didn't really know it very well, you know, you know, you know as a junior and kind of growing into I Didn't know everything about it and I just spent six months just learning the beast of flame and and it kind of was all It was all areas of my career all came into one right. I loved doing the 3d stuff. I did some of that in avid DS. I loved I loved the rendering lighting But I also liked you know online and color grading and and it all it's so I ride I ride at the mother ship is how I felt and that's how I became a demo guy for Autodesk did that for seven years Did the trade show circuits and then finally? I'm not sure if you remember that the previous flame product manager a guy named Charles was actually killed tragically in an accident And that was the time when I then started talking to Steve McNeil Who's our director of technology on the on the flame side and we sort of started thinking well Could this job be done remotely do I have to move to Montreal? Because one wonderful as it is it was a big shock We I visit there a lot, but these days actually live in Austin, Texas and And go to Montreal a lot when when the travel is allowed But I get to work with now these days I get to work with an amazing team of sort of combat seasoned professional developers QA folks and and They're really a very special team the flame team and I'd love to talk more about that But I won't go on for it. Go ahead onto. Yeah, that's great I'm just so thrilled that there's a you know someone else to add to the list of people who do a great Dave Samson impression That's an elite group I have to tell you What about you? Yeah Well, I guess that my journey is way less sexy than will but yeah, well here it is So I'm well, I guess you can hear it. I'm French Canadian. So English is not my mother language So we can just clear it out now I so Back in 98 I started a TV and film program So that's where I start learning flint at the time on a noctane and Then after that, I spent a few years in post working on some blockbusters like well I was looking at hybrid so I worked on the spy kids and Once upon a time in Mexico, so the Robert Rodriguez movie and Then I got the opportunity to join Autodesk in 2003 as a Q way so as a tester and Well, I guess that the rest the rest is history So I'm I'm with Autodesk since 2003 and that's pretty much Congratulations, the Pampers got a shout out in the chat by the way, so yeah, that's my sponsor. Oh Excellent Wonderful, I didn't know you were you were at hybrid. I I did a like three weeks there back in 96 or 97 like when they were still in the house Okay. Well, they were yeah, so it was just a bit before my time. So I was there at well in 20 Well from from 2001 to 2003 so Great group of people. Wow. Yeah, absolutely Let me ask you about about About flame. Where do you how do you describe flame to other people? Where do you see it in in its what is its place in the in the community and the ecosystem in the market? And that's the both of you really Well, I guess that the best way to describe it is flame is the Swiss army knife. So it can do basically everything on The the post ecosystem. So that's the main strength So I think that will can probably just chime in and just add more meat on the bone But I guess that that's I would describe it Yeah, it's I mean it's different things to different people, right? I mean to some people it's the greatest magic box of of creative Freeform tricks and that's a definitely a part of it. I love and I love to see the you know, the one frame of white crowd and the and the Gabriel goritos of the world and the stuff they come up with and the concepts which are like super CG supervisor level things And then to others, it's you know, it's it's the it's the Mac Daddy and le machine, right? And it's it's like Adobe Premiere and David and and some After Effects and some You know new all in one And then there's I mean, I just feel like there's other specializations And it all depends on where you where you come from, right? I mean, we've seen people come from avid DS, which was one of my backgrounds and and really like Really like flame in terms of its concepts of nesting nesting inside a shot an odyssey of Of a comp that is that is nested inside a timeline We've seen we see people Just just being pure conform conform easters if you like that they're they're building picture for the biggest blockbuster movies And doing it at a level of precision like I saw when I worked at company three And others like you know the Technicolors and the Encore's and the Molinares in London that are that are just like amazing at what they do in as well So that diversity Honestly, it's a blessing and a curse to us Because it's awesome, but it's also challenging when you come to have to prioritize Like how do we show something for everyone? Let's say each year in the cycle of what we of what we do You know I before we dive into that I want to go back to the team How how many people are on the development team and where are they located and what do they do? So, yeah, so so most of the team Really all the dash will developers are much are in Montreal in the famous 10 Duke office and You know the size the size varies based on projects. Yeah, we've we've seen ebb and flow There's sometimes there are projects that are combined like with the Maya team or with the shotgun team But we've kept like a yeah a real a solid core of a mixture of senior developers Some of our developers are 20 year veterans just on flame And and a lot of new blood actually coming into the team in the last sort of five to seven years We've we've had like interns come from you know the and the local Universities that like McGill University where a lot of the the original developers came from their Montreal and we've Pick them up if you will as as interns and brought them in and and now they're you know writing the Python API in flame or Refactoring code of how I tell them I said, thank you right We should do another live maybe one day bringing some of those individual like you know 22 year old developers that are like, yeah, I code for flame and that's what I do totally But so there's so there's so that's the that's that's all in the in the team and And it's a rich. It's a rich Kind of ecosystem of developers these days. I'm happy to say what would you say about about that? Yeah Well as you said Well like the flame community, I would say that the flame development team. It's much like more family Than a working team. So we are all brothers and sisters So that's the beauty of it. I love it Wonderful and we do sometimes argue like family Politics and Thanksgiving is that what you're saying? I was gonna say like like it is like, you know, we Talk about the creative problems our customers have and some of us are more tuned into Different, you know type of customer and we have that whole philosophical discussion of you know How serious are we about this aspect? You know this tracking or seen linear or color grading or and we and we try to You know, talk it out and balance it out and I think you know, I think maybe that that It creates the well-roundedness that hopefully we've achieved in this product and how many people are done in Sorry, can you say that again? Yeah, how many people are on the team in total? Well, let's see. So there's I mean, there's there's probably in total I mean, there's there's sort of there's 35 40 people involved and the developers the QA And then if you extend that, you know to sales marketing folks There's there's there's dozens more Wow, yeah, I'm sorry. What were you gonna say, yeah? Saying that well, sometimes we argue but it's all it's always in respect and love Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you So let's talk about the your your process so you just had a release Come come to fruition the 2021 release like a couple of weeks ago. It seems That came out When did that start, you know, how long is the development cycle? Tell me a little bit about the I mean, I live in in 30 second increments. I make commercials You know, sometimes I work for a day and sometimes I work for a month That's a really great question Andy And I'm glad you asked it because I think it's something that I even as a demo guy for Autodesk did not understand The the lead time and the planning period that goes into let's say making a an NAB major release Because if you think about it, that's the very end of the process where you have to have a fully cooked Faked out the oven distributed to customers You know back in the day would be burned on us on a bunch of CDs and distributed these days It's a download that has to be uploaded, you know, a few days before and then is trickled to users But that's just the very very very end and if you start tracking backwards You've got you know, you've got a gold build that has to be finally stabilized that has to have bugs fixed That then has to you know, I'm going backwards There's a feature complete day as we call it which is where all the features have to be in and we start stabilizing and fixing and and Hardening the release and that you know, that's a whole kind of four to six weeks We're four to six weeks back at this point, right? And then and then the the main development part could be three four or five months So then if you wind the clock back there, you're you're starting You're starting coding features. Maybe let's say October Right and that what that means is that you have to have planned what features you want to code in the quite a lot of detail before that so when that clock that back more so let's say July is where we have to Be start the the detailed planning process of what we want in the next April release Well, wait a minute you you in order to start detailed planning you have to have all your prioritization or your All of your kind of big blocks established So that process probably starts as early as the previous April NAB tech taster. Hello And then and then and then that feeds into a prioritization process so that by July We can say okay We know we want to do these three things and these little things Let's say from play feet playing feedback and that's going to be the major release Let's start planning. So the short answer to that question is it's almost a whole year, right to from conception or like Let's start a new a new piece of paper or a new a new Jira page Say what is next year's release going to be like? Almost a year to fully actually realizing that as a shipping piece of software So so to come along as I did as a demo guy Let's say in February and say, oh, can you not do one more feature guys like that's just like connected conform Is a total, you know, it's you're totally off in terms of what you're asking for I mean if you're saying There's one little bug in In feature X that I've played with for the last two months in beta that I know that you're just about to put the lid on Can you fix a bug in that? Yes, absolutely. Or can you nuance where the buttons are? Yes? That's a February question But that the question that you know, can you have a new concept needs to be really a year earlier To actually be able to on ramp into the full process now That doesn't you know smaller things for sure like going down the feet the flame feedback list and adding elbow nodes and being able to say Okay, well, there's a there's a I wish we could add these more functions the to the Python API are certainly things We can pick up late, but I didn't realize how early you have to add the big concepts in order to So to put it through the whole entire, you know, the factory Yeah, let's talk about the big the big concepts, how do you how do you decide on specific features to develop? I mean how how much is How much do you weigh in industry trends? And I guess maybe another way to ask it is how much of it is planned and how much of it is a reaction to things that? You weren't expecting or you know that the the market has now said is the most important feature of all time, right? I'm thinking 3d. I'm thinking stereoscopic, you know specifically, you know, see what Tim Farrell just said about it's time to get the bull rolling on a new text Tim, um, you're late. We were expecting that somewhere around two minutes after two, so Thank you, but but yeah, so to answer your question it it's a combination It's a combination. It's a funnel of input that you have to take lots of different inputs into the funnel So so for example, it's it's I mean some of the inputs are naturally user groups. Well, those are kind of trusted consortiums of valued users where we really do take big what would you call it big big takeaways from a user group That that says we really favor this over this like if they vote on something And we should talk more about like auto bucks. Maybe in a little bit, but that's one aspect for sure another aspect is industry trends Seeing seeing the need for something whether it was like you say stereoscopic back in the day The little bit before my time, but that I know that that was a big driver that sort of hijacked the flame release In in the sort of summer time that led to the next spring That's good and bad especially because you consider, you know in three years later It may not have been that you know, or maybe five years later. It was not so so so valuable But there are still good things in there VR another trend that you know, you could argue we could have responded more to We were cautious And I think that ultimately that played out in our favor Just because it could have been a massive derailment and you could have had nothing else kind of thing the following year if you're not careful But but so yeah, you're watching you're watching standards. You're watching HDR Watching, you know the cloud Stuck well that as well. And then and then the other aspect of courses. We're starting to understand more about our users through analytics So people that press the button that says we'll you know share share information It really does help the product because because we're able to see okay Well, they import, you know, certain codecs the they're able to understand what modules people spend the most time in and not Which is all you know anonymous data, but it really helps us to see. Oh my goodness No one's no one's using that codec Why would we and why do we need that kind of thing or it's and find defunct areas of the software and that kind of stuff So so I would say that's another aspect. That's that's just kind of starting off is is analytics as well Gotcha. Yeah, you mentioned you mentioned auto bucks. I don't know how many of the let me let me just take a minute and explain that to everyone else in the In the audience a Few years ago at NAB you guys held an event called auto bucks and invited some users to Kind of give some not only give some suggestions of features, but then a sign like a Dollar value of auto bucks value to them. I remember we all showed up. We were asked, you know to pick our five Favorite things we'd like to see developed and it was great because I was sitting next to a colleague and he had five completely different things Than I did we submitted those we all went away. I think we had lunch came back and Those those feature requests were up on the wall With dollar values attached to them. Yeah might have been $10 or $50 or whatever and we were each given a hundred You know auto bucks and told okay How much of this, you know money would you like to assign to your favorite features? Yeah, why did you guys hold that event? I thought it was fantastic, but I'd like to hear from you what the impetus was behind it Yeah, I mean it really was like a focus group Like a Luma exercise if you've heard of Luma we use that And and Jan here has been has been heavily involved in these from the beginning We've done them all over the world. It seems I am we and then Vegas a couple of times London We even did one as far back as like version 2015 For the in the in the kind of post-anniversary recovery era And it really was as Quinn was just saying they're a tough exercise in that kind of timeframe, but but but I think what it does is it serves to to help people understand the challenges and opportunities I guess in prioritization a wise man once told me pick three things do them well Versus pick ten things maybe and do them partly Which I think is guidance and I think they're doing an order a hundred dollar test or a hundred dollar investment test when you have seven projects which are $60 each and Ten projects which are $30 and Three projects that are you know ten and fifteen that are that are ten or funny bucks or whatever You then get to understand like okay, you can have one or two big rocks this year And you can have a little little rocks. What what makes a story? What makes a package that moves forward, let's say the agenda of machine learning or the agenda of Tracking or and and per Release it makes sense to kind of have some sort of focus or some kind of threads But fundamentally the auto box exercise to me and I'll let Jan jump in on this as well Gives us so gives a kind of an M an empathy or an empathic way to do that prioritization together and and it helps people to just sort of say oh wow so you so I can see now why you can't do You know rebuild paint and rebuild you know rendering or At the same time you have to pick one big rock Otherwise you all of your energy is going to get split which will mean that you won't do either one well What would you say about that? Yeah? I agree with you. I think that them well, there are two main purposes Just for the the auto box exercise The first one is that it helps users to realize that their priorities may be totally different than the other users And I guess this is not something easy to understand when you are working in your shop The and the other thing I would say that it's important It's from a user's standpoint It may be pretty hard to figure out the cost of implementing something Something that you think it's pretty easy to implement me may may turn to me may turn to Into a lot of words at the end and a lot a lot of development weeks and days so I guess that This exercise help users just to have a better understanding of the development constraint and the choice we have to make just development wise Yeah, I also remember sitting next to sitting in one of the tech teasers that that will was holding and sitting next to a good friend who was When we'll showed up it was one of those slides that said, you know We can work on these ten things picked to that you would like us to work on and I believe one of them was Connected conform and another one was related to like deep compositing and The person I was sitting next to had never conformed anything in their careers Worked at a shop where they exclusively did shop-based work and Have a heavy nuke presence. So they were it was totally into deep compositing. That's a phrase I had never heard before I conform every single day I'm doing it today before and after this logic live session. And so I remember looking at him and going like well Maybe this doesn't mean anything to you But it means everything to me and it was very clear to me at that point that like you said This is a product that that appeals to so many different people on very different levels And sometimes it can be a challenge to prioritize what you work on and when Maybe you could have told him it was deep conforming. Oh, thank you What let me go see if that URL is available. Hold on. I think I We could all come out of hit this rich people Yeah, I wanted to ask you About the the shutdown, you know, I guess it was It was in mid-March that we all shut down because of COVID-19 That was close to the end of a cycle of a release cycle But if you guys could just tell me what has changed I mean tell me of course about you know shutting down But also what about the you know your process? Have you had to change What with all working remotely and and things like that Yeah, I mean we've more zoom meetings. Yeah So most most seriously well, I do not know if Probably will can can chime it here, but development-wise it didn't change a lot of things So we we are a bit more restricted to Aldware because because basically most of our Aldware is in the building which we cannot access get access now, but we Apart from that we can do mostly everything just remotely so I didn't believe it's going to affect the value of flame or diminish the the The the level the quality level of the features in the future. So for us, it's probably a good thing I've been a learning experience for all of us, right? I mean we've suddenly got all our developers and QA is working from home some Some needing to literally kind of the last day the office is open Take take home specific specialized pieces of equipment to better do their job It's it's there's an anxiety level and I kind of what are we going to do and being able to sort of a few extra meetings to coordinate, which I'm sure you we've all experienced But but yeah technology in some ways enables this right, I mean we we build the actual flame build is it is done in California So they they were remoting onto Autodesk servers, you know from Montreal if you like to build the build the actual Software on in our daily You know debug builds Anyway They would it was never a So it was in a long time since with a server down the hall where you could go and do a hard reboot If you would Anyway, so and and I think that you know, it's we've all had to find our way to be productive You know, I've I've been working from home for a few years But I've always known that you know Yeah, I'm sitting next sits next to Louie so I can count on that if I say something to you I'm not Louie will know and and that he can shout across the desk to step on a bri and make sure that we're on for that Meeting of that kind of stuff that dynamic is not so easy now, right? And there's a there's a like we say no, yeah There's a creative kind of being together in the office and and you know I'd come into town for a week and we would all we would all kind of do some deeper planning meetings Quite regularly, but we've had to manage without that And we were planning to do one at the end of March and we had to do it over zoom And it may yeah, these things these things get a little harder I think it was kind of fortunate that we were near the end of the the release in March If this had happened to us in November or December maybe where you know, it's the core working time of a major release It probably would have been it could have had a much more impacts. Maybe delays. It's hard to say Are you thinking about or have you had to change Your your roadmap in response to now everybody working from home or that work working remotely is now a thing It was a it was a trend now. It's a thing, you know, yeah I hear you saying I would say not in terms of capacity or ability to achieve I think like the Amazon where it's amazing how Professional these these folks are in terms of they're still they're not saying we can only do 50% of the work We're looking at you know still doing full productivity But what is being injected into our prioritization is the is the industry trend of remote and cloud Right and all the facets of that So we'd already we'd already started to think about that over the last year or so And we started to investigate. Well, what is you know, what does cloud look like for for finishing and for you know high high speed interactive Composting with a with a video preview. Do you need a video preview? Do you need audio and video in sync? those kind of questions and You know even a year ago, there was some pretty big challenges including customers that did not want to be on the internet at all And remember that things have changed. Yeah, things have changed quite dramatically, right? And then suddenly in in like if you put chart back to like the HPA Meetup in I think it was what early February It was it was pretty clear that you know studios are really starting to take take cloud and remote work flows more seriously and Then come March. It's like we're starting to think wow, you know Remote is coming at us fast and then and then cloud might well be considered Not too long after so so we've really started to To factor that in it's still it's still kind of you know, it's still I feel Like it's still sort of baby steps in some ways where now whether it's people operating over, you know, HP RGS or or Any desk team viewer or you know, like a Teradici set up We've certainly tried to do some quick reactions to that like the the early DK you first sent her a seven six Yeah, but I think there's there's more to come right and and there's more concepts to think about in terms of remote reviewing Being able to being able to to kind of connect to your flame from one location and then connect to it from another location And then and then at what point do you start thinking about actually using a cloud data center to host your flames? Maybe one day, but that's kind of where we're we're at with that Gotcha, let me switch to some of the the questions that we're getting here from from from the audience Here's one will we see Python 3 anytime soon? Yes, that wasn't for me. Well, we'll have to I think I mean we'll we'll want to Look at it. Hopefully at some point next year Yeah And whilst others, you know bigger facilities, I'm sure struggling with making that change in lockstep with all their all their tools Not just flame. I can imagine, you know smaller folks will just jump right on it Gotcha Could you explain the the situation with luster? What's going on with luster? Sure. Yeah. Well, certainly What what a great product first of all? I use it in production And we we have I feel like we're still learning from luster In terms of its its speed and agility on in certain ways And I would I would then say that We've we've had some various kind of Dances with what what we do with color grading, you know in the flame family and if you cast back To if you think back to like 2016 We we launched this program called this this project I guess for connected color workflow Which was a way to jump across from luster to flame to do something and then jump back to luster And for some people that that was pretty cool because that would allow you to To to go from a kind of color grading environment and step into Compositing for an hour and then and then come back or maybe five minutes and come back or an hour and come back however What it wasn't was it wasn't It wasn't fully integrated Grading and it wasn't integrated finishing. So at some point we we pivoted to say, okay, we have to pick a horse here We have to pick whether we build compositing into luster and maybe conform and other things and floating point processing or whether we start Bringing some of those concepts that we know people need in flame today That was then and project forward to you know, 2020 and 2023. What are they going to need? So we we made a decision to start integrating color tools Inside flame. So so today we're at this point where you know, perhaps we're Perhaps we're 75% done 80% done how how you rate it where we're we're building An alternate really an integrated grading experience inside of flame that we think will will will ultimately be our our integrated solution there's certainly no problem you people are still using luster and still, you know, loving its merits And then and then others are are growing and learning flame as an integrated Finishing tool, you know people coming out of college these days and and are not seeing any boundaries between color grading and online And 3d modeling and lighting It's all just one creative process of post or previous post or whatever way you want to look at it So that's to me. That's the story of luster and the surrounding initiatives Gotcha. I remember I mean, I remember either either one of the user groups we've had or some previous session The you know the question came up about you know integrating luster with flame about having a luster tab And I remember I'm sure I'm paraphrasing but one of your responses was but would you really want that? you know, would you really want just a tab or Would you like something Like what are you really asking for, you know like that kind of thing and I think when you when you when you do those thought experiments when you really think that out it's It leads to better things at least a better more productive You know, right? I remember candidly. I mean we we launched like connected color workflow and said look We added we added a way to get to flame from inside luster And then I remember one person saying to me I can't remember who they were you you've done it inside out We don't want that we want we want color tools inside flame And in other words we we conform here. We finish here We want the middle part of the job to be like a super advanced version of color warper And then and we start then saying okay. Well, what does that mean really? Does it mean that you just need a better color tool and the answer is yes But we also need a new way of looking at the timeline that is more visual Oh, so you mean you want a storyboard? Well, yes, kind of And we want grouping and we want the ability to You know, why would you limit yourself at just color? effectors in In the shape system Right because it's in if we we could have built like a whole nother module that was exactly like luster But then you'd be limited in terms of that you couldn't use Maybe, you know The kia that you want in there or you couldn't use a matchbox that you want in there So we finally came to this kind of design philosophy of It actually needs to be built from action The action tool tailored to be To be basically the most flexible color grading tool you've ever had and that's and that's what sort of Begot the image node or the image node as we say in french And that and that is really kind of the the core with the effects environment around it as a as a concept And we haven't and by the i'm looking at some of the other comments there. We haven't forgotten some of the higher You know productivity tools It just takes time. We have to go do an order box test this afternoon Figure out what what order we should do it, right? You can Venmo you the auto box Um, you know one of the questions that comes up a lot for a topic that comes up a lot On logic and we we even had it in one of our logic live sessions here is you know I need to buy a machine for home or I need to buy a machine Do I get a mac or I get a linux machine mac or linux mac or linux and the conversation starts usually with you know Something at a higher level and it quickly descends into um, you know like what? What either doesn't work on mac or what works better on linux. I want since I wanted to ask you guys what? um, why are there differences between mac and and and the windows versions of the software and Maybe just dive into that a little bit So the windows I guess you you meant linux. Oh, I'm sorry. I meant linux. Yes There's a well between the mac and the windows version Yeah, well the thing is that well, I was just wondering if it was a trap or or not Well Yeah So so so the thing is that I well When when someone asked me the question If I should go with linux or mac I always reflect and just say You you have to think of your needs So if you need to run multiple application on the same box I guess the solution is probably is likely a mac compared to linux because it's much easier To to install multiple application if you want a full powerful system Flame dedicated maybe you can venture into linux. So you you have to think about what you need first But feature-wise well, I guess that the main difference between mac and linux is The graphics board so on linux the availability of a more powerful graphics board Is there compared to max and that has always been Basically the the main difference between both operation operating system So on linux you can get a much more Graph capable graphics board compared to linux The thing is that with the new mac pro This well, I would say that the gap between Mac and linux is much more smaller in regards to graphics board than it used to be So will do you do you want to add something? Yeah, no, I agree And I mean we we're all kind of waiting to see how the mac pro planned Panned out. It seems to be kind of impressing people There's the whole aspect of convenience and like I said third party Not needing much system engineering help on the mac side that certainly seems to attract people to mac The I mean, there's I think it's worth saying that we're more likely to see linux in the cloud and of a remote versus mac That's an interesting factor It's it's mainly I think might come down to you don't see apple forming a big cloud presence and as a kind of a High-end it kind of platform the the the open sourceness of linux has probably been attractive Um, I mean you you've seen I see people saying well, yeah, you can use you can use your mac for the cloud by having a viewer that is a an aws linux machine on your mac for pro Right, so that's not really So there's some interesting dynamics going on there I would quickly follow up with That we don't deliberately Want to restrict anything on the mac? We've there's been some restrictions like hardware anti aliasing The way that shaders are computed, you know the way substance works the way The the matchboxes or more likely actual kind of rendering Engine of action has to be tailored a little bit differently on the mac So we pay a little tax We have to kind of you know, we have to make it work on max and linux and and that's And I don't mean in terms of slowing down linux I mean in terms of we have to adjust it so that it works well on mac as well. That's the tax Um, but I think it's worth it because I think that's growth area I think people that are coming to flame new are picking mac overall And uh, and even if they graduate into a super ado for a crazy linux machine after two years I'm that's okay and they can go back to mac again when they start their own post house And they don't have an engineer to help them. You know, I think there's a whole whole bunch of dynamics there But but like I mean the world of the world of more powerful max is now starting to emerge I would yeah, I think we just have to Prioritize, you know, what could we do to optimize that and take advantage of those that hardware Along with all the other priorities that we want to try and do You know Sure And I would also say that the well, sorry, sorry, india. I would also say that the portable aspect is important here because A lot of users freelancers need to to run flame on different just computers So run it on a laptop move it Let's say on use it on set and so on So and well, this is I would say that mac os is more a platform of choice for those type of users now Compared to linux. So that's probably another incentive just to go to linux if you need a portable system So keeping the product the same in terms of like being able to archive back and forth is important I think being able to keep the features and where the buttons are and it experience the same is something that Is required for that totally There's been a lot of chatter Lately about a windows version. Sorry. Yeah, it was there was it wasn't a trap, but it was it was an implied trap We know that it was coming. I know I know it isn't like you haven't seen it written, you know, all over Talk to me about that. Is that something that's Is that something that's in in the cards if if not, what what are some of the challenges to to taking on? You know a third platform, I guess Um, I I let me I'll I'll jump in there and you should you can you can give us some real facts. How's that? Yeah Not alternate alternate facts Well from my point of view as like if you think about it on the business side It's a question of What is the biggest thing that could impact flame in the long term positively, right? What if you had a magic wand or a big pot of money? What would you want to do? And and that's when maybe the conversation comes up retire But that's when you might ask that How big is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? If you were to start a three-year project that was a windows port because Because whilst you know whilst we're you might say is it really that big? Well flame is big, right? It's millions of lines of code. It's got a lot of network dependencies. It's got a lot of Uh different ways of calling hardware. It's not like putting a small app or a web, you know database It's it's like it's a it's a monster So it is a big project. So you can if you can trust us on that Then the question is okay. Well, is that Is it significant enough of a? addressable market on the other end Or are there other things that you could do to to achieve the same amount of growth that maybe are You know incremental or the outside of software development like An educational program. Could that be more impactful than then pull into windows or Or would you know some crazy marketing campaign or adding features that go after nuke or resolve or Is is there is there, you know, is there more incremental ways to to achieve something significant? So that's that's always the the the kind of dichotomy of of the windows argument for me Would it add to more users? I mean I could see that that was the conversation about You know doing the mac version, you know Yeah, I think that that was a natural step And if you remember back to november 2015 that was flame unleashed where we we kind of put off Put in the water with with smoke with flare with flame assist and then eventually Flame and along with that came the change of business model where it was no longer A turnkey system but also but now you know a software product Which which makes it more palatable to a big company like autodesk that sells software, right? and that's another factor that you need to to kind of put into the world here is is What makes sense for the company and the business model and are they are they able to do invest in education or You know going after a competitor. There's a lot of dynamics And much as much as I wish I could take on something as big as adding windows it probably It seems too big to to give enough results Gotcha, yon. Did you want to add anything to that? No, well, I think that my take on this is that Well, we we all understand and I guess you agree that Going to windows or porting flame to windows is not going to please any of the current flame users, right? It's probably something that would attract new flame users The thing well the counterpart is that it's going to take it. It's going well It would take a significant amount of of development time and resources to to get there so So so we have to keep that in mind just say that well Would our users just accept to To the flame team just to put some initiative on both while we are just doing something for future users or do we Well So so I guess that the use well the question we have to ask is guess is that Does the user want to do the user want us to work on what is meaningful for their workflow now Or just on something that would attract other users and that's the question we have to ask us So that's that's my take on Gotcha Yeah, it's a tricky one Andy. Hopefully that we gave you a reasonable answer There are maybe it's worth quickly saying that there are other like architectural initiatives that we are working on Trying to modernize in terms of the way we address hardware I'm not sure how many of you have heard of The language of open gl That has been you know, the historical way of addressing graphics cards since the 80s That flame was very much built on but how it's it's being you know It's ultimately the new generation of of technology to address GPU compute is starting to come in through things like vulcan or linux and windows But and metal for apple. So so that's an area where you know, maybe there could be some more incremental investment and and see See a nice growth over time in what we could do with the hardware Gotcha 3d tracking one of the questions here points out that 3d tracking has been in the number one position on flame feedback for about three years And are you working on it? That's a very good question and i'm not at liberty to say at this point That's good, man. We went 57 minutes without that so that I gotta cheers to everyone But but I wanted to say that I acknowledge it's been a number one. I'd like to point out that A defocus tool. I like a physical defocus type thing was up there as well And hopefully that you've seen some movement on that that came out of tech taster and autobucks consortiums But we have not we have not ignored the the desire for for improved camera solving and tracking and I think that all I'd like to say is that I think when you think about machine learning And the cool stuff that is happening with machine learning it it really hit me Like about I know it's six months or a year ago that you know Is there going to be a new generation of camera solvers that that are kind of machine learning enabled? And would it be worth some sort of research some sort of understanding? to not just rebuild a PF track or a 3d equalizer, but but see if there's options out there to do something more automated And I'm not sure if other Other companies are thinking the same way, but I'm just saying that it's it's one area where machine learning could You know could actually help us ultimately when we're not sure yet, but we're we're certainly I'm certainly something to think on Just a couple more a couple more questions for you Um, what about the threat from from uh competitors that give things away for free? I know that that was always a challenge. I remember that Was was uh very explicitly brought up about uh about like resolve versus Uh luster now. It's very difficult sometimes to compete against a competitors giving it away You know, yeah, well, that's that's an interesting. How do you combat that? And in a word the way to beat free for me is workflow In other words, if you have a better workflow, then you should be turning away a free product They should be paying you to use it if it's makes it for a slower workflow Um, but if you if you have the real value comes in if you can provide a workflow that That that is just better And then and then I would also point out that the costs of the software have not are not the biggest piece in a business's You know costing anymore, right? It's got to be the the talent and The space or maybe maybe that changes with work from home But but the individual talents should be and are the biggest cost and the biggest uh producer Of stuff software ultimately is kind of has come down to a point where it's a tool Like owning a laptop or you know buying the right tv or whatever Versus it being the room Or the the the main the biggest expense so so I think that helps What do you think could you name a couple of uh of of trends or new technologies that uh either you're excited about or you're thinking about or Might find its way into our favorite app I think we're still we're still in the kind of spotty teenage era of machine learning There's another another level of maturity those were great years. Well, let me tell you Yeah, well, I'm imagining that you'll start to see kind of AI stuff Not in the scary way, but in the good way find its way into all kinds of tools And maybe have more phases and breakthroughs as a trend We we're like we talked about earlier. We're still just waiting to see um, the the longer term impacts of Of remote to cloud. I mean our our CEOs and business owners going to Acknowledge, wow, if we can remote into our office Why don't we remote into a data center? That's a few blocks away and then All wall our office and remote into the data center and have the office be just another remote Site. I mean, I think that's a a possible trend um, I still think HDR is still kind of coming coming along. I feel like we'll see more and more content Done that way more easily as tools get easier And and I think HDR and VFX Might be another trend that we'll see people being able to monitor it earlier on in the pipeline Other than that, I think I think we're just going to see more pressure on Tools to be more productive, whether it's more automated tracking tools Roto isolation I can see that becoming more and more pressure As as there's you know kind of one person do it all on their home Home machine and produce a product project Those are going to be pressures that I think will also squeeze out of current era Cool There's one more question left in the q&a before we sign off and it's uh, just about atomize There was a there was a feature developed atomize. What was the impetus for? For it and didn't have any further trajectory than where it has landed Wow, let's think I mean that that's that's a good old one. It's it was a cool technique It gave us some kind of interesting Particle like things, but it definitely had some limits you couldn't you couldn't it wasn't really a true 3d particle system and I mean, I'd see it as kind of a An interesting foray of like the matchbox technologies um I don't I don't know of any I don't think we have any other other big plans for it to be honest with you Gotcha Does that oh I was about to ask does anyone have any more questions and boom Uh, man. Well, you had to say particle system. We almost got through this without Particles So, um c9 asks, um particle system It's uh, that's one of those ones where imagine we had an order bucks exercise where you You had to pick And you could only get one big rock in your hundred dollars and those two big rocks were camera tracking or particles that's exactly the kind of The kind of either or situation that we run into and it'd be interesting to To know if how this room this virtual room would vote between the two Would they would they would they go tracking or would they go? um particles I'm not sure maybe This one we'll do it on logic. Hey, they're coming in neither Oh, here we go Boom forest particles via o effects. That's queen. That's right. It is it works Yeah particle illusion as an o effects works with its limits, but Oh coloring keys camera tracking Asking you shall see there's a lot of tracking in there. Okay. Well, I think the trackings might have it. Oh wait Brooks Tomlinson save for particles ML camera tracking someone likes that text Did he tracking lens distortion workflows part of camera tracking I see from All right, so you can see that you can see the like the kind of flurry of Of stuff Even sign and set camera tracking that's cool Funny, yeah, but it is challenging and hopefully that's that's I mean that's that's laid bare here that That there's there's we're never sure of good ideas it's just a matter of time resources and planning and Packaging. Okay. We need to do that But we also need to you know update the red codec and the arry support and this new camera And we're we're always gonna come out with seven new cameras next week. So And that's all part of having a having a product in an ecosystem right that has to go together Totally so so that's the that's the rub Love it. Well, well and yon. Thank you so much for giving us your time today And we really appreciate it and uh, you know, I've always been amazed at at at how much of your time you guys give to the community And I just wanted to thank you very much for that Very welcome We can also thank you and before for everything you do for this community. Yeah, oh my pleasure, man. Thank you These things have been great because I've been learning stuff that I've come back and watching videos and This has been a real really cool initiative that you've got here evie Oh, thanks, man. Thank you very much and thank you to everybody who's given such great feedback about these. It's really been It's really been great to hear the feedback Um, so let's close this out for today. If anybody of course has any other questions for the guys you can you can reach them On logic you can reach them at the area Please make sure to give your make your suggestions on flame feedback Um We have a upcoming logic live sessions next sunday may 24th We're going to do Maya for flame artists with Yuri temposki fantastic artist. Definitely tune in for that Uh may 31st connected conform for social deliverables, which I am doing today Uh with brian bailey. So, uh, I'm definitely going to have questions for brian come may 31st June 7th, we're going to do silhouette paint with forest effects Oh And on june 14th resolve for flame artists with david johns As always you can find this and other past episodes of logic live on logic dot tv And it looks like this And please be sure to subscribe to our youtube channel And thank you again to cynosis oceana our sponsor. We couldn't do what we do without the reseller community So thank you cynosis oceana provides solutions to keep teams connected and working Find out more about their remote workflow solutions at cynosis.io Cynosis oceana supporting flame artists since 1997 that's going to do it for logic live today. Thank you everybody and we will see you next week